Fallen Masters Read online

  Well, she had lost a loved one, and now she was dying, so she had no desire to listen to their heart-felt stories, thank you very much.

  Raymond parked the car, then got her luggage out, and they walked to the general terminal where they were met by their pilot.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. McAvoy,” Biff Jamison said. “But all noncommercial aviation in and out of LaGuardia is prohibited.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know, I just called operations to file my flight plan and was told that all personal aircraft were grounded. I’m on my way to operations now to see what is going on.”

  “Did they give you any idea how long it would be?”

  “The word I got was indefinite.”

  As soon as Biff had told Charlene that all noncommercial aircraft were grounded, Sue had gotten on the phone. It was like Sue, Charlene thought, to stay ahead of the situation.

  “I just booked you first class on American Airlines. You will connect through Dallas to Mexico City. I was able to secure you one first class ticket.”

  “I hate flying commercial,” Charlene said.

  “Well, you can’t take your private jet, and it’s a long way to drive,” Sue said.

  Charlene laughed. “You’re right about that. And I thank you for being so efficient. All right, let’s get over to the terminal.”

  When they got to the airport there was chaos everywhere. People were angry and some were crying. Something had definitely happened, but Charlene had no idea what it might have been.

  “I’ll find out,” Sue said. She went over to talk to one of the airport officials, then came back. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Sue!” Charlene said, shocked at her appearance. “What is it? What has happened?”

  “It seems that three airplanes coming from Europe and bound for the States crashed into the Atlantic.”

  “Three crashes? But that’s impossible!” Charlene said.

  “Improbable, not impossible. Especially given the last transmission from each of the three planes.”

  “What was it?”

  “Viva Domingo.”

  “They were hijacked, clearly,” Raymond said. “But why? What does that mean?”

  Sue offered only what came to her mind: “No survivors. Six hundred people killed. I don’t know—” She could not hold back the tears. “Six hundred innocent people murdered,” she said, her voice breaking on the words.

  Charlene felt an odd sense of disconnection to terrible news. She wished that she could muster some sense of sympathy, but she could not. It was as if it never happened.

  She waited for what she assumed was an appropriate length of time before she asked a question. It was a practical question, though its very practicality made it seem cold and uncaring about the lives of the six hundred who had just died.

  “What time is my flight, and is it leaving on time?” she asked.

  Sue looked at Raymond in a way that indicated disbelief to the question, but she bucked up to answer it professionally.

  “Your flight leaves in thirty minutes. By the way, it cost a fortune to book you this late. And only because of who you are was I was able to book a seat at all. I know that doesn’t matter to you, but I just thought I would tell you,” Sue said.

  “Is it on time?”

  Sue looked up at one of the departure monitors. “It is on time,” she said. “I am amazed that all travel isn’t completely shut down but I suppose we have to live with horror and commerce must go on. Come on, there is someone at the concourse who will escort you to the VIP lounge. This is as far as Raymond and I can go.”

  Charlene looked at Sue and saw genuine sadness over the fate of those passengers who had perished in the three ill-fated flights, as well as a sense of disappointment in Charlene’s cold reaction to the news.

  “Sue,” Charlene said. “My dear and wonderful friend. How like you it is, to be moved by such tragedy. Please don’t think I am insensitive to it. It’s just that—so much has happened—and I’ve so much on my mind now. It’s almost impossible for me to comprehend such evil. There are positive and negative forces in the Universe, and the veil between those forces is weakening as the Dark Forces are gaining strength.” It was as if she were compelled to say these words, as if she were hearing them just as she was speaking them. But she did not know why.…

  “Yes,” Sue said. “Yes, that is it exactly. You do understand.”

  Those words had come from Charlene’s mouth without any conscious thought on her part—and with surprising confidence, given the lack of compassion she had felt moments earlier. Then she knew: they were Ryan’s words.

  Charlene embraced Sue, a long, heartfelt embrace. She also hugged Raymond then he took her luggage to one of the two agents who were waiting to escort Charlene to the VIP lounge for her brief wait before boarding.

  In less than six hours, Charlene thought, she would be relaxing at the Four Seasons Hotel in the Zona Rosa of Mexico City. Hopefully, her seatmate would not recognize her and would not be chatty.

  She got her wish … at least one of them.

  In the VIP lounge, the large screen HDTV was tuned to one of the cable news channels, and a grim-looking male reporter was talking about the hijacked airliners. Even as he talked, the running scroll on the bottom of the screen was providing even more details.

  … Number of passengers in the Lufthansa plane was 212, including thirty nuns from the order of Our Lady of Penance Convent in Schweinfurt, coming to America in an exchange program …

  Charlene was the only passenger in the VIP lounge at the moment, so when she asked one of the attendants to please turn to another channel, he did so. It was a documentary of the pioneers of computer software, and at the moment, it featured a much younger Ryan McAvoy. From the fat to the fire, Charlene mused. But she could stand heartache as she contemplated all the families who had lost a loved one this day.

  CHAPTER

  62

  “Hello, Miss St. John,” the flight attendant said, smiling broadly. “For your information, your seatmate will be Mr. Alejandro Rojas. Do you know him?”

  “No, should I?”

  “Not necessarily. He is a very successful housing developer. I just thought you may have heard of him.”

  The other passengers began boarding; then a few moments later Mr. Rojas, with a polite greeting, took his seat beside her. Charlene realized right away that not only did she not know him … he didn’t know her either.

  Rojas slept on the flight from New York to Dallas. As it turned out, they were seatmates on the flight from DFW to Mexico City as well, and that was fine with Charlene. He hadn’t been a bother so far and that is the way she liked it.

  Forty-five minutes after departing DFW, the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign came on, followed by the cabin speakers. The captain had already given his usual departure spiel: altitude, length of flight, et cetera. This, concurrent with the seat belt sign coming on, couldn’t be good.

  “Uh … ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. We’ve been given permission to make a slight deviation in our flight path in order to go around a rather severe storm cell that is in front of us. I’m going to give you as comfortable a ride as possible, but we are going to experience some moderate to sometimes heavy chop. Please keep your seat belts fastened, and I’ll get us through this as quickly as I can.”

  Within moments of the announcement, they experienced the turbulence the captain had warned of. Most of the chop felt like a car going over a very rough road, but some of it was quite severe, a long enough drop that Charlene was actually experiencing weightlessness, and if it had not been for the seat belt, she surely would have come up from her seat.

  Señor Rojas started to pray and was using a rosary. Seeing Rojas with the rosary reminded her of her father’s rosary, that had been with him, but was given to her just before the coffin was closed. That rosary was now in a jewelry box back home. Charlene’s mother, on the other hand, had been Baptist before she married her father, wh
o was Catholic, and after her father died, her mother went back to the Baptist church, which was primarily Charlene’s experience when she went to church.

  Rojas continued praying until the plane passed through the turbulence and the seat belt light was turned off again. There were a few audible sighs of relief among the other passengers in first class. Rojas put his rosary back in his pocket, then perhaps from embarrassment, or relief, or just a sense of having come so far with her, he turned to talk to her.

  “Is this your first time to Mexico City?” he asked.

  “No, I was here once, many years ago,” Charlene said. “How about you? Have you been here before?”

  “I’ve been here many times,” Rojas said. “In fact, this marks my fiftieth year of promissory trips to the Basilica.”

  “The Basilica? What is that? Is that a special Mexican team or group, or something?” Charlene asked. “And what’s a promissory trip?”

  Mr. Rojas laughed. “So many questions. You will excuse me for asking this, but you aren’t a woman of faith, are you?”

  She started to say no, but she held the answer. Could she really say no? Considering all that had happened to her lately? She decided that she could say no. After all, the only thing that had happened to her that she knew, without doubt, was true was the death sentence she had received from the doctor when he told her about the tumor behind her heart.

  “I guess I would have to say that I am not a person of faith,” she replied. “Please tell me about this Basilica and why it is so important.”

  “It deals with the miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Have you not heard of that?”

  “No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” Charlene replied.

  “Would you like to hear the story?”

  Charlene’s first thought was to answer, “No, thank you.” But even as she opened her mouth, she was almost surprised to hear herself say, “Yes, please do tell it. I would love to hear the story.”

  Rojas began to talk. His voice was low and soothing, not the kind that would lull her to sleep, but one that, strangely, seemed to comfort her.

  “Once, long ago—in 1531, actually, on December ninth—a poor man, a fifty-seven-year-old widower by the name of Juan Diego, lived in a small village near Mexico City. He was on his way to a nearby barrio to attend Mass in honor of Our Lady, and as he walked by a hill called Tepeyac, he heard beautiful music.

  “Then a cloud appeared, and within the cloud he saw a young woman dressed like an Aztec princess. The young woman told him to speak to the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumarraga, and to tell the bishop that a chapel was to be built there, in that place where she had appeared.

  “Juan Diego went to the bishop, and the bishop told him that the lady would have to give him a sign. But at that same time, Juan Diego’s uncle became seriously ill, so Diego forgot all about the lady. She didn’t forget him, though, and she told him that his uncle would recover. She also provided fresh roses for Juan to carry to the bishop in his tilma, or peasant’s cloak. Now this, in itself, was a sign, you see, because it wasn’t the season for roses, and of course, in those days, there were no florist shops or greenhouses. When Juan Diego told the bishop about the fresh roses, and he opened his cape in the bishop’s presence, the roses fell to the ground and the bishop sank to his knees. But it wasn’t the roses that startled the bishop. It seems that on Diego’s cape appeared an image of Mary exactly as she had appeared at the hill of Tepeyac. That was December 12, 1531, and that day is now celebrated as the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

  “That is a beautiful story,” Charlene said.

  “But you think it is only a story,” Rojas replied.

  Charlene smiled. “I—I envy you your faith,” she said.

  “Would the story be more meaningful to you if I told you that some of the roses were blue?”

  “What?” Charlene gasped.

  “Blue roses have some meaning to you, don’t they?”

  “You—you know who I am.”

  “Only what the flight attendant told me. She said you were a famous singer. I must confess that I don’t listen much to popular music, I don’t know anything about you.”

  “Then how did you know about the blue rose?”

  Rojas looked surprised. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “I just had the idea that if the roses were blue, it would mean something to you. Does it?”

  “Yes,” Charlene replied without further explanation. “You said you were making a promissory trip to the Basilica. Your fiftieth, I think you said. Does that mean you go every year?”

  “Yes,” Rojas said. “I have a daughter—she is fifty now. When she was a baby, she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. This was fifty years ago, remember, and the treatment for cancer was not as advanced as it is now. The doctors told me that there was no hope.

  “But I prayed to God, and I made a promise that if my daughter was cured, I would make this pilgrimage on the anniversary of her healing every year that she was alive, no matter what.”

  Unable to let herself believe that there was any correlation to his daughter’s healing and his faith, nevertheless, slightly envious of it, she smiled indulgently.

  Rojas showed a picture of his daughter, her children, and her grandchildren.

  “I am glad you have such faith, Señor Rojas. And I am glad your daughter lived to provide you with such beautiful grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

  “Faith is a privilege to be shared, my dear. And God gives gifts all the times … Milagros, miracles are his calling card.”

  Rojas grew quiet then, but his simple declaration of faith had left her feeling moved. She was also aware that there was something in great opposition happening inside her. Part of her wanted to hug this complete stranger for sharing his personal and intimate story with a complete stranger, but there was this weird swirling of hate and envy being nurtured inside her. She was in tune with her own feelings and she felt anger and hostility toward this man who, unlike her, had been given such a happy ending. She had been to more specialists and all concurred that her cancer was incurable. There was no happy ending for her. She was also acutely aware that for all the money in the world, success, and fame, none of it could give her that sense of peace, nor did it save her father or her husband. What about me? she wanted to cry out. What about my life?

  CHAPTER

  63

  Mexico City

  When the door to the plane opened, Paul was standing there in the Jetway with a team of private security agents, waiting for her. Most people can’t even come to the gate anymore, and Paul was actually standing in the Jetway. She wondered how he’d gotten access until she saw some uniformed airline executives standing there with him, waiting to whisk Charlene off the plane. She couldn’t help but wonder if there was any limit to Paul’s ability to get things done.

  Mr. Rojas was coming behind her, and because he was old and lamed by ancient knees and protesting joints, he needed assistance. She crooked her arm to let him walk with her.

  “What are you doing, Charlene?” Paul asked. “We are going to be late.”

  “Late for what, Paul?” Charlene asked. “Mr. Rojas was very helpful to me during the flight down, and the least we can do is help him off the plane.”

  “Helpful in what way?” Paul asked, clearly irritated by the situation.

  “Not in any way you would understand,” Charlene said. “In fact, I’m not sure I understand it myself. Come along, Mr. Rojas, just hold on to my arm and we’ll get down all right.”

  “Thank you, Miss St. John,” Rojas said as the two of them moved slowly down the Jetway. There was a wheelchair waiting for Rojas when they reached the gate, and Charlene wished him well, then left the airport with Paul.

  She was used to checking into hotels under assumed names, but she was quite surprised when she saw how Paul had registered her.

  “Eva Perón?” she said. “Paul, you actually checked me in under the name of one of the most famous women
in all of Latin America?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the only name I could think of,” Paul replied.

  Charlene laughed.

  Five minutes after unpacking and appreciating the courtyard of the Four Seasons Hotel, Charlene picked up the phone and dialed Paul’s number.

  “This is Paul Maxwell.”

  “Paul, I’m going to take a drive.”

  “I can’t go right now, Charlene. I’m waiting on a call to confirm some details of the show.”

  “I don’t mean to sound put-offish, Paul, but I didn’t phone you to ask you to join me. I’m going for a drive, by myself.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Paul said.

  “Paul, my father is dead. I don’t need a surrogate father.”

  Paul sighed, indicating that he knew he had been beaten. “All right, I’ll have one of the security men bring the SUV around.”

  “Thank you.”

  Charlene didn’t tell Paul, but she had no intention of going with one of the security men, so she didn’t even approach the SUV she saw parked at the far end of the curved driveway. Instead, she got into one of the hotel’s town cars that was parked around on the side. She felt she just needed to get away from the “madness” that always accompanied major tours and public events, despite Paul’s and the others’ genuine concern for her safety.

  “Señora?” the driver said.

  “I would like you to take me to the Basilica, please.”

  “Señora, it is nighttime. The Basilica is closed,” the driver said. Charlene knew that if she didn’t go now, she never would get up enough nerve to do this again.

  “I know, but please take me there. I would like to see it, even from the outside.”